If there’s one thing that nearly all economists agree on, it’s that getting rid of trade restrictions is generally good for a country’s economy.

Doing so leads to a higher national income, faster economic growth, higher productivity and more competition and innovation. Freer trade also tends to lower prices and improve the...

Just look at a map of Remote Oceania – the region of the Pacific that contains Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, French Polynesia and Micronesia – and it’s hard not to wonder how people originally settled on these islands....

Enron. Worldcom. The Madoff scandal. The mortgage meltdown. Now Wells Fargo.

High-profile corporate frauds like these all seem to follow the same pattern. First the misconduct is discovered, and then we learn about all of the whistleblowers who tried to stop the fraud much earlier. Congress then tries to enhance whistleblower protections, with...

The cost of academic journals has increased steeply over the past few decades and continues to climb. Academic libraries, already caught in an economic squeeze, are finding it difficult to acquire new journal subscriptions or, in the worst case, are even canceling existing subscriptions.

Eit...

Naypyidaw, Myanmar, is one of the strangest capital cities in the world. The city, only a decade old, is a sprawling maze of 20-lane highways, government compounds and pastel condominiums.

One visitor described it as “an eerie picture of post-apocalypse suburban America.” Another was more blunt, calling it “the most awful place...

Seasonal influenza is a major global health concern. Worldwide, annual influenza epidemics result in three to five million cases of severe illness, and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. In industrialized countries, most deaths associated with influenza occur among people age 65 or older, who...

The banana is the world’s most popular fruit crop, with over 100 million metric tons produced annually in over 130 tropical and subtropical countries. Edible bananas are the result of a genetic accident in nature that created the seedless fruit we enjoy today. Virtually all the...

Celebrity involvement in presidential politics in 2016 has deviated from tradition in one big way.

Donald Trump cruised to the Republican nomination on the strength of his own celebrity status. He parlayed his celebrity status, insult-comic debate skills and Twitter tirades into an estimated US$2 billion worth of free media.

In contrast, Ronald...

During the debates, fact-checkers like CNN and Politifact focus on evaluating the truthfulness of what each candidate said.

While it is important to get the facts straight, focusing on the truth of the candidates’ statements is not nearly enough to evaluate the actual impact of the debate on the audience. How candidates say things matters...

It was on Oct. 21, 2014 that The Conversation US was launched from a small office on the Boston University campus. We were following in the successful footsteps of our colleagues in Australia and the United Kingdom, but there was, inevitably, a bit of apprehension as to how this new model for journalism, written by academics and edited by...